Howard Bloom: Reinventing Capitalism:Putting Soul in the Machine

It's happening... there is a new movement afoot. My heart beats faster, my mind can't stop putting together the possible implications, the incredible possibilities ahead for our society, and for the world. In Myers-Briggs language - I am an ENFP. A fellow ENFP. Lyn Kyneston, went through Myers-Briggs training last week, and shared what this really means :-) "Every day, New and Fascinating Possibilities". Couple that with some of my core values and strength "themes" (according to Gallup's Clifton Strengthsfinder) of Maximizer, Learner, Strategic, and Connectedness, and it's no wonder that I can't stop thinking about this stuff. And it's no accident that I keep uncovering thought leaders and resources that play in the same space - let's get real intentional about what we want, and we can change the world.

Enter today's thought leader - Howard Bloom, and an incredible source of innovative thinking and journalism, a magazine called "?what is enlightenment". I encourage you to buy this back Issue 28 / March–May 2005 - Can Big Business Save the World?

Here is the description of this issue's theme - "Big business has changed the world—and brought us to the edge of ecological and social crisis. Could the capitalist engines of globalization become a positive force for global unity? In this issue, WIE takes you into the minds and offices of the new corporate change-makers who are unleashing the creativity of capitalism to serve the planet and its people. ". Worth the time - if you work in a corporation, and you would like to be part of something more that increasing corporate profits!

Here is just a sneak peak at some of Howard Bloom's thoughts - from an article in this issue:

"We have to retell the history of Western civilization in a way that hints at the rich ore beneath the slopes and plains of our history's terrain. We have to peel back the lumpy outer skin of capitalism and show the beating heart within. A semi-brain-dead capitalism has given vast new powers to humanity—powers like the ability to light our homes at night with electricity and add five hours a day to the normal human's waking life. A capitalism that knows its mission, a capitalism propelled by the troika of empathy, passion, and reason, can work far greater wonders.
Imagine what it would be like if at every staff meeting you were expected to put the care of the multitudes we mistakenly call “consumers” first. Imagine what it would be like to go to work each morning in a company that saw your passions as your greatest engines, your curiosities as your fuel, and your idealisms as the pistons of your labors and of your soul. Imagine what it would be like if your superiors told you that the ultimate challenge was to tune your empathic abilities so you could sense the needs of your firm's customers even before those customers knew quite what they hankered after. Imagine what it would be like if your superiors asked you to do what artists and psychics do—find your hidden selves in the hidden hungers of those you serve. There is an implicit code by which we in the Western system live—a code that demands that we uplift each other . . . and that we do it globally.

The “human resources” creed—the real business of business—should be one that comes from the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay:

A man was starving in Capri;
He moved his eyes and looked at me;
I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,
And knew his hunger as my own.

Mine every greed, mine every lust.
And all the while for every grief,
Each suffering, I craved relief.

The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,
No higher than the soul is high.

People are the ones who demand. We do it because we desire, we hanker, we hunger, we're eager, we're roused. Or we're deadened, we're hurt, we're unsatisfied, we need. Consumerism—that wretched sin—isn't what it seems. Capitalism is what we do each day, and it can generate in our daily lives and in the place we work the exuberance of satisfying others, the exhilaration of feeling wanted, the elation of creativity, and the knowledge that we've contributed to something far, far bigger than ourselves.

We desperately need a reinvention and a re-perception of the system that has given Western civilization its long-term strength and its recent weaknesses. We need to wake up capitalism to its mission—a set of moral imperatives and heroic demands that are implicit in the Western way of life. By reinventing capitalism and injecting our own souls into the machine, you and I can raise the bar of human possibility.

We stand at a choice point in history. We can wake up and smell the coffee of our civilization—its pep, its drive, and its power to add to human lives. We can see the ideals and the creative imperatives that capitalism now hides. Or we can go with the flow of the current zeitgeist and condemn all that we have as mere consumerist trash and every workday move we make as an attempt to pick the pockets of the poor. If we fail to see the force of secular salvation, the power of messianic capitalism, in what we do each day, then we will yield the planet up to those who insist on taking the Western system's transformative powers away. "

Again - I say WOW! Now let's start "playing Bigger". It's time to change. Or perhaps is quarter past time to change. Let's go. Let's lead.